Rotating Local Backup Drives

• This article is for Windows only

Summary:

Carbonite Safe Server Backup does not support rotating its backup location. You should not rotate the disk/drive where CSSB stores data. This “Backup Location” should be static and unchanging. Changes to it should be sparing, at best, and utilize the Move Backups functionality in CSSB when they do occur. However, you may COPY the backups from the Backup Location to another drive or drives (you should not move, delete, or otherwise manually modify the data in the Backup Location, but COPY is safe). This new drive could be rotated out. This allows you to have a rotate-capable location without interfering with CSSB’s operation.

CSSB will manage and handle the backups in the Backup Location(s) chosen by you. When backups occur, they are placed in the Backup Location. When backups meet their retention, CSSB removes them from the Backup Location. You, not CSSB, would be responsible for managing the data on your rotating drives, including on retention events.

Solution:

The easiest method of doing this would be to set up a script utilizing the built-in Robocopy functionality of Windows. The /MIR flag with Robocopy ensures the new disk is an exact copy of whatever is in the source folder (which should be the Backup Location). It will remove data from the new disk that isn’t in the source Backup Location.

Microsoft’s Documentation on Robocopy: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administration/windows-commands/robocopy

Sample Script:

robocopy X:\My\Backup\Location Y:\My\Rotate\Drive\ /MIR

• This will make G:\My\Rotate\Drive\ into an exact copy of F:\My\Backup\Location every time it is run. Substitute your actual Backup Location and New Drive in the paths specified in the example above. This script could be run manually or on a schedule.

The Robocopy documentation above will explain how to perform re-tries, how to wait between re-tries, how to log robocopy’s work, and more.

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